For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

LOVE IT or hate it, none can deny the power of dancehall. Whether for good - as in Sean Paul's phenomenal international success, or for bad - as in the recent 'terror at Sting' - this music has an uncanny ability to excite people.

When Richard ‘Shrimpy’ Clarke fought for the World Flyweight Boxing title in 1990 you could almost feel the nationalistic fervour in the jampacked National Arena. “Lick ‘im down Shrimpy!” the ecstatic crowd screamed deliriously as he skillfully outboxed champion Sot Chitalada for the first 8 rounds - “He’s giving him a boxing lesson!” a man behind me kept shouting. Alas a jolting uppercut knocked out Shrimpy in the 11th round. “Him teach him too good!” a wag commented wryly as we filed out in gloomy disappointment.

I like to think I’m getting more tolerant as the years go by and more wiling to see the other person’s point of view. But the older I get the less I can stand the company of those who ignorantly insist on classifying people according to how much melainin they have in their epidermis and who see the world in terms of superior “us” and inferior “them”.

“A culture based on joy is bound to be shallow. Sadly, to sell itself, the Caribbean encourages the delights of mindlessness, of brilliant vacuity, as a place to flee not only winter but that seriousness that comes only out of culture with four seasons.” Derek Walcott – Nobel Lecture 1992

As a shopkeeper my job is to make readily available to customers whatever they want. Still, I never cease to be amazed at how many seemingly unnecessary things people not only desire but apparently can’t do without. But then I’m a man, and apart from pharmaceuticals probably 90% of the stuff in my stores is either bought by or for women. It’s incredible really how different male and female needs seem to be. Left to our own inclinations all most men really require is enough food, shelter from the rain, and occasional sex. Which is why bachelor homes usually resemble bear caves with furniture.

Last month the Norwegian Book Club asked 100 well-known authors in 54 countries to choose the 100 greatest works of fiction. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes got 50% more votes than any other title, and Fyodor Dostoevsky had the most books cited - Crime And Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov.

“Guilty mom did it for kids ”  - The Star, May 8 2002

“Cassandra Morrison, 31, … [was] yesterday charged with possession of dealing in and taking steps to export cocaine… Morrison told the court she had eight children for six different men, ages two months, two years, five years, eight years, 10 years, 11 years, 13 years and 15 years old… she would have received 3000 pounds on her arrival in London… she was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment.”

“World music is defined as all contemporary popular music that comes from anywhere outside Europe or North America except Jamaica.” Electronic Mail & Guardian, October 2, 1997

How old is the universe? The latest data suggests approximately 15 billion years. Or at least that is the amount of time science says has elapsed since the so called ‘big bang’, when an infinitesimally minute point of singularity exploded into a 10 billion degrees hot fireball and gave birth to the universe. But how did this point of singularity come into being? How long did it exist before it exploded? And what caused it to explode?

“It would be a fine thing indeed if the world was run by those who judge men from books and the world from maps!”. Napoleon’s jibe against ivory tower intellectuals came to mind when I read Marcia Sutherland’s December 5^th letter about my article “Thinking in patois”, which accused me of “linguistic bigotry”, advised me to “examine the scientific linguistic evidence”, and chided me for lacking “scholarly expertise”.